Consumers increasingly have the option to stream live media content over the Internet. When content is streamed live, fragments of the content are provided to user equipment devices as the content is being created. These fragments are rendered by the user equipment devices as they arrive, permitting consumers to observe events, such as sports games, as the events develop. Live Internet streaming may be advantageous because it may give consumers access to kinds of programming that were until recently strictly in the domain of traditional television and radio broadcasting.
Streaming of live media content may be more technically challenging than non-live content streaming. Because live content is rendered at approximately the same time as it is captured, live content cannot be buffered for prolonged periods of time. The lack of extensive buffering in live content streaming may cause live content streaming to require greater network bandwidth and/or smaller network latency than non-live content streaming.
Accordingly, the need exists for new methods, systems, and media for delivery of content that are capable of satisfying the bandwidth and latency requirements of live content streaming while still being suitable for streaming non-live content.